Local firm using seeds for biofuel for jets

Published: Monday, October 8, 2012 at 07:54 PM.

Chuck Red is the principal engineer and division manager for ARA in Panama City. “In three minutes we take plant oil and turn it into a crude oil,” Red said.

Red said they can make the conversion to crude oil at about 10 cents a gallon. “It can be a replacement for refinery crude,” Red said.

Fuel companies have been looking for alternatives to traditional fuels, and Red is confident ARA can be the company that produces that technology.

“This feed stock is renewable. They don’t have go out and find more,” Red said.

ARA and Lummus Global lease the technology to fuel refiners, who produce the product. ARA holds the patent on the technology.

ARA and NRC will test the renewable jet fuel in a test flight with the NRC Falcon-20 twin engine jet at the end of this month in Ottawa, Canada. The flight will be the first time a jet aircraft is powered by 100 percent, unblended, renewable jet fuel that meets petroleum jet fuel specifications.

During the test flight, a second aircraft, the National Research Council’s T-33 jet, will fly behind the Falcon 20 to measure the emissions of the engine operating on both the ReadiJet bio fuel and on conventional petroleum-based aviation fuel, according to ARA officials.

PANAMA CITY — Steve Baxley, the senior engineer at Applied Research Associates (ARA), stood Monday among jars of fluids, beakers and equipment, holding a tiny amount of seeds in the palm of his hand.

They are carinata seeds, which are playing a big part in ARA’s plan to produce a low-cost, high-grade jet fuel.

ARA and Chevron Lummus Global (CLG) are partnering with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and Agrisoma Biosciences Inc., a Canadian firm with a growing presence in the biofuel feedstock market, to evaluate 100 percent drop-in ReadiJet biofuel.

“We’re creating a better biofuel,” Baxley said. “It is easy to make biodiesel that you can run in your tractor, but to put the fuel in an airplane, like an F-22 or an F-16, that meets military specs is what we have been working on.”

Fuels that run aircraft such as the F-22 need “energy density” and a “physical density” in a jet fuel.

“Biodiesel has trouble in the cold,” Baxley said. “What we are making here can meet the density specifications for future military-type vehicles.”

Chuck Red is the principal engineer and division manager for ARA in Panama City. “In three minutes we take plant oil and turn it into a crude oil,” Red said.

Red said they can make the conversion to crude oil at about 10 cents a gallon. “It can be a replacement for refinery crude,” Red said.

Fuel companies have been looking for alternatives to traditional fuels, and Red is confident ARA can be the company that produces that technology.

“This feed stock is renewable. They don’t have go out and find more,” Red said.

ARA and Lummus Global lease the technology to fuel refiners, who produce the product. ARA holds the patent on the technology.

ARA and NRC will test the renewable jet fuel in a test flight with the NRC Falcon-20 twin engine jet at the end of this month in Ottawa, Canada. The flight will be the first time a jet aircraft is powered by 100 percent, unblended, renewable jet fuel that meets petroleum jet fuel specifications.

During the test flight, a second aircraft, the National Research Council’s T-33 jet, will fly behind the Falcon 20 to measure the emissions of the engine operating on both the ReadiJet bio fuel and on conventional petroleum-based aviation fuel, according to ARA officials.

Systems onboard the Falcon will allow NRC’s flight research team to switch back and forth between the two fuel types throughout the flight. The data will be the first of its kind to evaluate the fuel emissions of an aircraft engine operating on 100 percent biofuel.

Red said he believes oil companies will incorporate the fuel into their overall plans in the near future.

“Everybody has said biofuel is five years down the road,” Red said. “I think it is here.”